ANOTHER study of why women play chess worse than men has come up with a new reason: They’re afraid of men.

Past research has explained the paucity of female masters with a variety of factors, including the way that men outnumber women by 20-to-1 among tournament players.

In the new study, researchers at the University of Padova, Italy, arranged for 42 women to play 15-minute games against anonymous opponents over the Internet. The women were told that they were playing different opponents of roughly the same playing strength as them.

When the women were given no other information, they won about one game out of two. The same women had about the same result when they were falsely told they were playing another woman.

But when they were told they were playing a man, their results dropped by a half.

In reality, the women were playing all their games against men — but only did badly when they knew the truth.

The study, by Anne Maass, Claudio D’Ettole and Mara Cadinu, also tried to determine if self-esteem played a role in performance. They found that the more confident women were in their chess ability, they better they played.